


how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster

by NinthFeather



Series: A Recurring Nightmare with Popcorn [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, MASH (TV)
Genre: AKA that time Kimblee brought down a building on Ed, Angst and Humor, Baschool Fight Aftermath (FMA), Crossover, Feels, Gen, Mild Gore, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Not actually in continuity with the rest of the series, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinthFeather/pseuds/NinthFeather
Summary: If Pierce had come back with Mustang's group to Amestris, and then followed Ed north to Briggs, maybe he would've been around for the aftermath of the fight between Ed and Kimblee at Baschool. Here's a glimpse at that alternate timeline.Or, Pierce is the only person here with any medical training, which means he's the only person who really understands how serious this is.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Series: A Recurring Nightmare with Popcorn [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/238455
Comments: 9
Kudos: 55





	how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DandelionFunky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DandelionFunky/gifts).



> This is another fic for [DandelionFunky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DandelionFunky/pseuds/DandelionFunky), who asked for “the FMAB ‘Edward impaled on rebar scene,’ but with MASH RNWP Hawkeye present.” I….got really carried away this time, but I’m happy with the results.
> 
> Warnings for...honestly, the canon content of that scene, but with slightly more discussion of the possibility of child death, because unlike everyone there in canon, Pierce is a real doctor who knows stomach wounds are Bad.
> 
> Small sections of the dialogue are directly from the Viz translation of the manga, so credit to the English translators and Viz.
> 
> The temptation to name this [“oh look, i’ve been impaled”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvIZgkVsnuk) was strong, but I instead took the title from W. H. Auden’s [“Musee de Beaux Arts,”](http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html) which is a poem about Pieter Brughel’s painting _The Fall of Icarus_. Truly quarantine has inspired me to new levels of pretentiousness.

Benjamin Franklin Pierce, “Hawkeye” to friends who didn’t already have a terrifying sniper they knew by that name, woke up slowly. His head was pounding, and his throat was intolerably dry. He inhaled, and coughed on the dusty air, only to find that just coughing was enough to make his body  _ ache _ . What had happened?

He remembered chasing after Ed when he ran after that Kimblee fellow, the one who’d been condemned by Amestris’s brutal military government for being _too murder-happy,_ and failing to catch up. He’d gotten winded, and then the hallway had filled first with smoke and then with foul-smelling gas. Then he’d finally caught a flash of red and gold and—

The building had come down.

He got up, or tried to. It didn’t work so well, because he was under a pile of concrete and steel beams. He felt pretty badly bruised, but nothing seemed broken, and if he was bleeding, he couldn’t tell.

This must’ve been Kimblee--Ed could be reckless with himself, but he was obsessively careful with everyone else. He’d never bring down a building unless he was certain he could do it without killing anyone inside. And Pierce wasn’t dead, or in danger of dying, but if some of the rubble had landed a few feet over…

Electricity crackled, and stone hands shot up out of the ground, lifting the rubble away. Pierce wriggled out from underneath as quickly as he could, before the pile shifted and he got trapped again. He couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of a transmutation that was so obviously Ed’s. If he was awake enough to do such delicate work, he had to be in decent condition, right?

He got to his feet, shakily, as Ed transmuted the room into something resembling its original condition. His clothes were a bit torn up, and he probably needed monitoring for internal bleeding, but he didn’t see any serious wounds.

Someone on the other side of the room made a noise of surprise, and Pierce looked over to see a gorilla and a lion wearing Amestrian military uniforms. Still didn’t quite compare to, say, Envy, but it sure was a weird sight.

“So, in Kimblee’s eyes, we’re just pawns to be sacrificed, are we?” the lion muttered as his companion exclaimed in pain. “That b*stard!”

Another spot of movement caught Pierce’s eye, and he decided to ignore the animal-people in favor of Ed, who was lying on the ground, with something that looked suspiciously like metal sticking out of his back.

_ Not sticking out of his back, _ Pierce realized, as he got closer.  _It’s through his stomach._

Pierce wasn’t an idiot. If anything, he was a bit of a medical genius. But there were some wounds that he would be hard pressed to treat even in a fully supplied hospital, and this was one of them. As things were, he barely had the resources to make Ed comfortable before he passed.

_ Sh*t, is he even sixteen yet _ ? Pierce thought, followed almost immediately by,  _Who the h*ll is gonna tell Mustang? What about his brother, or that mechanic of his?_

He knelt down in front of Ed, who regarded him blearily.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “Thanks for cleaning up the rubble, but you can rest now.”

“He’s still alive?” one of the soldiers asked, coming over to them.

“How come you saved us, Fullmetal?” the other asked. “You’re in worse shape than we are.”

Pierce gave them both a sharp look.

“Can’t…rest…yet….” Ed rasped, startling all three of them.

“Don’t think you have a lot of choice on that one,” Pierce said, and wow, there really was a lot of dust in here; his throat was so dry that his voice was cracking.

“Need…you two…to pull this…” he put a hand around the rebar sticking out of his stomach, “out of me.”

“Ed, that’s not going to fix it,” Pierce said.

“Trust me,” Ed said.

“Which one of us went to medical school?” Pierce said.

“Yeah…but I’m…an alchemist,” Ed said, with a wavering echo of his normal cocky grin.

“What the _h*ll_ are you planning?” Pierce said. “You’ve said before you don’t know a lot about medical alchemy.”

“Learned some…back when we were planning…human transmutation,” Ed said.

“Even then,” one of the soldiers, the one who looked like a gorilla, ventured, “I heard that the only reason Mr. Kimblee survived being impaled by Scar was because the doctors had a Philosopher’s Stone.”

“I’m gonna…use my life force,” Ed said.

“That sounds really dangerous, kid,” Pierce said.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “But I’ll die…if I don’t, right?”

“Yeah,” Pierce said softly. He looked over at the soldiers. “I’m a doctor. If we leave him like this or try to get him to a hospital as he is, he’ll absolutely die.”

The soldiers looked at one another.

“We were never actually ordered to kill him,” the gorilla-like one said.

“He saved us,” the lion-like one said. “And I’d really rather not leave a kid to die.”

“This is really gonna hurt though,” the gorilla-like one warned.

Ed’s grin stretched out. “Won’t…be the worst I’ve had.”

It was horrific to watch, and Pierce was sure it would be engraved on his memory for the rest of his life. The screaming, the squelch of blood and flesh, the flickering light of transmutation. It seemed to drag on forever.

But finally, it was over, and Ed was still and silent, the bloody rebar discarded on the ground nearby.

Mechanically, Pierce took his pulse.

“He’s still alive,” he said.

“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Ed confirmed weakly.

“I’ll be,” the gorilla-like soldier exclaimed. “Guess alchemists don’t need doctors!”

“Nah, all I did was stop the bleeding and put the undamaged organs back together,” Ed said. “I’ll need a real surgeon soon. Any of you guys know any?”

“You are such a brat,” Pierce breathed. The blurriness in his vision was absolutely not tears.

“Gotta catch up Kimblee…” Ed added.

“Yeah, not until I make sure you reconnected your insides the right way,” Pierce said. He turned to the soldiers. “Can I trust you guys to help me get him out of here?”

“He saved our lives,” the gorilla-like one said. “We owe him.”

“I’ll carry him,” the lion-like one volunteered.

“Thanks,” Pierce said. “Name’s Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce,”

“I’m Heinkel, and that’s Darius,” the lion-like chimera said. “We used to work for Kimblee, but I think we’ve been fired.”

“Seems like,” Pierce said, then did a double-take as he saw Ed attempting to climb onto Heinkel’s back. “Wait, no, the piggy-back thing is adorable, but he’s gonna pass out and then we’re all gonna regret it. Just, uh….do you guys call it princess carry?”

“Not…a princess,” Ed protested.

“Yeah, but we need to be able to keep an eye on whether you start running a fever,” Pierce said. “Also, Heinkel is tall enough that if you fall off his back you’ll get a concussion, and that’s the last thing you need.”

“Not short,” Ed protested.

“Right, of course not,” Pierce groaned.

“So, uh, aren’t you gonna ask about the chimera thing?” Darius asked.

That rang a bell. “Oh, is that what you guys call being, like, part animal?” Pierce asked.

“That’s right,” Darius said. He still looked like he was waiting for Pierce to turn on him.

“I genuinely do not care if you turn out to be Douglas MacArthur’s long-lost twin brother, as long as you help me get Ed to someplace with medical supplies,” Pierce said.

“Are we supposed to know who that is?” Heinkel asked.

“My mistake, that guy’s famous back home,” Pierce said. “Point is, as long as you’re helping, I don’t care.”

Heinkel nodded and picked Ed up, as Darius carefully approached the doorway. 

“Coast seems clear for now. Let’s go,” Darius said.

“What do you mean, ‘back home’?” Heinkel asked. “You Drachman?”

“Ehhhhhh, not exactly,” Pierce said, wiggling his fingers. “We’ve got a long walk ahead, so I guess I’ve got time to explain…”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
